How Important is Server Location for Local SEO? (8 Proven Reasons)

Search Engine Optimization elaborated for SEO is nothing but optimizing the overall aspects of your website in such a way that they get a higher ranking on the search engine result pages. 

You must know that to get ranked at the top; your website should have a user-friendly interface, high-quality content, promotion of content, etc.

But do you have any idea that the location of the server is essential as well? No, right! It sounds relatively simple and logical to you now that we have come up with the question. 

The server’s location is the vital factor that google considers while ranking a website in a particular geo-location. 

A Lot of times, because the latency increases depending on your server location, Google prefers to show the results based on the location of the user, so if, for example, your visitors are primarily based in India, you should probably try and choose a web host who is also primarily based in India or at least has the data centres in India.

and Google will rank your website higher. As a result, that’s very important to understand that your server location can significantly affect when and how your websites are displayed.

Keep in mind that when you’re evaluating if your web host is good or detrimental to your SEO.

The location of the company from which you are purchasing your domain name can affect the SEO of your website. It is a pretty basic thing. 

If put in simple words, you wouldn’t advertise woollen clothes in Summer and in Mumbai just because it has more population. The location of the server affects the local SEO similarly. 

The terms coming forth while researching this topic can be jargon for you, but we will discuss it and explain how server location affects local SEO. 

Here are some common questions which pop up in the minds of people who are new to this concept.

• Is the geographical location of the host of your website important?
• Which is the best domain name?
• What is the importance of Local SEO strategies?
• Does Local SEO have more worth for small businesses?
• Can I target people from specific locations?

Let’s get down on the topic by following points that satisfy your curiosity hunger box!

How to know where your server is Located?

You can find the exact location of your website’s server using a tool like Pingdom or simply contacting your web host. Once you know your site’s hosting, you can follow the tips below to improve your local SEO.

Alternatively, There are a few steps you can follow to know the same.

First, you need to find the IP your domain is pointing to; for this, we will use our Domain to IP tool here.

Enter your domain and copy the IP address and the country where your IP is located.

But in case you do not find anything, then you have a second option find out the location of the IP address we got;

we will use our Bulk GEO IP Locator tool here.

Paste the IP address from the domain to the IP tool above and paste In the input box of the above tool and click submit to know your result;

How important is Server Location for Local SEO?

It is no secret that the geographical location of a business can have an impact on its success. This is especially true when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO).

To rank higher in local search results, it is important for businesses to understand how server location affects local SEO.

There are several factors that Google takes into account when ranking websites. One such factor is the geographical location of the server hosting the website.

If your website’s server is located in a different country than your target market, your rankings may decrease. This is because Google prefers to show results based on the user’s location.

To improve your local SEO, it is important to choose a web host that has servers located in your target market. You can also use local SEO strategies to help improve your rankings.

For small businesses, local SEO may be more important than global SEO because they are more likely to get traffic from their local community. However, all businesses can benefit from using Local SEO tactics.

We will discuss in detail about each point below;

Affects website speed 

The location of your website server directly affects the website speed. The closer your visitor is to your data centre, the faster your website will load. 

A 1-second delay in loading can cause a max to max 7% decrease in your website’s conversion rate. 

For website speed, we can take an example of two countries’ servers that show differences in the time for loading the website. 

The first country, Mumbai, shows 6.3 sec for loading, whereas the UK server takes 2 sec to load the website.

Server location does matter; if your target audience is working in Mumbai, then you have to target them and take the server as the base for SEO ranking. 

The loading speed will affect your performance on Search Engine results. For better performance, SiteGround is one of the fastest Web-Hosting services. 

If you want to share worldwide, cloud hosting is best suited.

SEO ranking is influenced

If you own a local business and are figuring out how to outrank your competitors on local searches, here are the ranking factors you need to know. 

The first ranking factor is Proximity, which means how far away a potential customer is from your business. 

So, for example, if you own a toy store business in the central area, but your potential customer is searching for a generic keyword like a toy store near me, and they are not precisely near your local store, then your business may not be shown. 

The second-ranking factor is Relevance, so if somebody searches for specific toys like chewable toys for babies in the central area instead of the general term baby toy stores. 

It will depend on the keywords you add to your google business profile that matches the search term for your business to be shown, and the final ranking factor is Prominence. 

The more people speak positively about your business, giving you five-star reviews on your business profile and many others matter to the ranking on local searches.

Cheap is not always good.

Investing in good not so cheap hosting can also affect the performance of your websites. Some hosting, rather than overseas, can give you the best service and work as you expect them to give the results. 

Cheap hosting may not satisfy you overall on the side of quality. It may also not unleash the full potential of your website.

You will not want to stay back or at the same place; instead, you would prefer to make small progress on your overall SEO game. 

Low-price hosting may be enticing and may have the necessary features that your website needs or have features in bulk, but it may lack quality. 

If you run Pagespeed audit on your website, it returns “Reduce initial server response time” it directly indicates your server’s performance, if it a red-flagged, then you need to upgrade your hosting.

That is the sole purpose of suggesting quality hosting to have slow progress with not so much but enough features to run your website. 

However, many hosting service providers can make your website weigh more on quality.

Country code top-level domain (ccTLD)

A country code top-level domain or ccTLD is just an internationalized version of what you might be familiar with. It depends on where you’re from, where you grew up, or where you have lived. 

This differs from country to country and it’s colloquially different as well. For example, for the US it’s .us, for the United Kingdom it’s .uk, for Germany it’s.de, Australia it’s.au, Mexico .mx, and China .cn. 

It is essentially a domain you can decide it signifies from a particular place. So the ccTLDs are the most powerful way to rank a domain or page in a particular country. 

Google assumes content on a ccTLD is designed for the country and will bias towards rankings in that country. So use it cautiously.

Webmaster tool’s geotargeting for gTLDs 

If you have a website for a business or organization located in a particular region, you might want to geotarget the site to that region. 

So, for example, if you have a furniture store in your country and somebody from another country is searching for furniture, your site is probably not relevant to them because they just want to go get something in their area. 

And therefore, if you geo-targeted your website in your country, you would be able to more accurately reach searchers who are searching within the same country and might be near your store. 

You can geo-target in Webmaster tools either just a generic, like a straight-up domain. 

You can add and target individual subfolders on your site, and you can also add and geo-target subdomains on your website. 

Content delivery network (CDN)

CDN helps to improve the page load speed of a site by moving some of the content closer to the end user via a network of servers all sharing the same content;

this means that content can be delivered more efficiently, and there is less downtime for the user who has requested that file. They can be used to store static files such as style sheets, images, and PDFs. 

CDN can help to improve page load speed by closing the distance between the user and the content, so knowing where your user base is located can make all the difference since page load speed is a known variant in search engine rankings, decreasing the amount of loading time may have a positive effect on traffic conversions and rankings. 

A CDN can also keep a server from crashing when many users are trying to access the site simultaneously by disturbing the load across multiple servers.

Easier for the crawler to discover you

Google bots initially fetch only a few web pages but then follow the links on those pages and find new ones; that’s why backlinks are crucial for a website. 

it’s how crawlers discover new pages by moving from one page to another, discovering new links and crawling those; google bots can discover billions of web pages on the internet and add them to google’s database. 

To see how many pages have been crawled by google, you can check the crawl stats report in your google search console; it gives you stats about google bot’s activity on your site for the last 90 days.

Unintentional target

Showing up in local searches can be the difference between a tidal wave of customers and a phone that never rings. With around 46% of all Google searches being localized, there are loads of potential customers using local search every day to find the best local businesses in your area. 

Furthermore, it’s been found that around 50% of local searches are made on mobiles, and a whopping 78% of these local mobile searches result from offline purchases, giving you even more reason to start advertising your business locally and the importance of your server location. 

If the server location is overseas in other countries instead of the targeted one, the chance of your server appearing in that country’s search engine is higher. 

Rather than the target audience in the selected country, we intend.

More Resources

• How To Incorporate social media Into SEO Strategy in 2022
• UX and SEO: Why Good User Experience is Essential for SEO in 2022
• Google Images SEO in 2022: Best Practices
• 9 Most Important Meta Tags You Need to Know for SEO

What is the difference between SEO and Local SEO?

Local SEO helps your business to become visible to the people in the nearby or specific locality and get higher ranks in local search engine result pages. It is also an optimization strategy but just on a local stage. 

Whereas SEO is used to increase the website’s visibility on a National or International level. Both of these concepts have their benefits and disadvantages. If used logically, then your business can grow with the usage of the limited amount of resources. 

I mean, everybody wants their firm to make the highest possible profit from the available or limited resources.

What is the significance of Local SEO?

Local SEO can help you target people in your locality. The importance of Local SEO is, it can avoid unnecessarily huge expenses carried out to grow your website organically. 

To make your website emerge in the local search result pages of the people in the nearby locality, Local SEO can just be the perfect choice for you. 

Especially if you have a small firm and want to earn more profit by reaching out to the maximum number of people, this concept of SEO can play a huge part. Google ranks the sites higher in google maps which are situated closest to the location of the searchers. 

The strategy can attract seekers searching for a product or service in a nearby location.

Does server location matter with CDN?

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. 

The work of CDN is to deliver internet content quickly. It delivers the essential things needed for a website or content to load. It may include HTML pages, images, videos, etc all those elements which can enhance the website’s working. 

With this, the location of the hosting server may not affect the website. Countries with a better base can give you the entire benefit of CDN, and then you won’t have to worry about the location of the server for your website.

Does changing the website host affect SEO?

Shifting to a new website host is also executed with the expectation to have a much better and positive impact on the website, but in some cases, the act can have the opposite impact. Certain factors can act as determinants for changing the host server. 

These determinants can hinder the growth of your website. It can also decrease search engine visibility. You may think that your brand may get noticed by more people but the determinants of changing the website can just make your brand grow towards unawareness among the people. 

Changing a host is a big decision for your website as the plans and working of the host and many other aspects can be different. Thus, changing the website does affect the SEO of the website.

Does the server affect latency?

The further distance of a hosting server drastically affects the website’s latency. Latency means to impede or delay. Low latency means that the website is smooth and users have a great time and experience in handling the website. 

On the other hand, if the website’s latency is more significant the users may get agitated due to the rough and slow working of the website and might not want to return to the website. 

This is of great significance when you want to get your website ranked higher or put the first impression on the newly arrived audience on your website. It can also negatively affect the reputation of your brand.

Conclusion

The location of your hosting server matters a lot for your website to be user-friendly and positively impact your website’s SEO ranking. 

Having an overseas server may be cost-efficient, but this money saving does not matter if your website won’t ranked higher or gives trouble to your audience. 

The server may give you the vision of getting to transfer the saved cost in other factors to make your website outreach more audience, but this vision of yours may be short-lived, as the further the location of the server higher the chances that your website will have some downside that will affect the influence of the website on the internet surfers or customers. 

Location determines the site speed, and the server’s ranking removes the unintentional target and leads to ranking high in google in search engine traffic.

These setbacks can be avoided if your hosting service allows you to set boundaries or regions for the visibility of your website. 

Setting a location for the website can also come in handy for local SEO strategy, i.e., boost the ranking of your business and make it noticeable to the local audience. 

The domain name you choose also has enormous value in making your business website detectable on local search engine result pages (SERPs). 

Through thorough research, you can determine which domain name can be most useful to your business.